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Abstract and Keywords

In a broad sense, papyrology is a discipline concerned with the recovery and exploitation of ancient artefacts bearing writing, and of the textual material preserved on such artefacts. For the most part it focuses on what can be called the spectrum of everyday writing, rather than forms of writing intended for publicity and permanence, most of which were inscribed on stone or metal and belong to epigraphy in the scholarly division of labour. For enviromental reasons, most papyrological material does come from Egypt. The Ptolemaic kingdom was the last of the main Hellenistic states to come to an end and be taken into the Roman Empire. But papyrological evidence for matters Roman goes back to the century before Actium. This article focuses on papyri and Roman history, and looks at a few areas in which important work has been done in recent years, including language, education and ownership of books, and the ubiquity of writing.

Roger S. Bagnall is Professor of Ancient History and Director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. He is a papyrologist and historian of Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique Egypt.

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